Media Diary: January

One of my new years resolutions was to keep track more of what I’m reading/writing/watching/playing/listening to (a media diary basically). And as you can tell given that it is now 2/1, that has not been going swimmingly.

So to try to make up for lack of time, here’s all of Jan!

What I Read/Am Reading: I finished making my way downtown through An Introduction to Roman Religion by John Scheid. I’m not entirely sure if it lives up to being an introduction: it pretty much throws you into ancient roman society and ( hits the ground running )

My library loan request for How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell also came in so I finished that. ( At first an amusing book, then a heavy one, then an absolute drag )

I also read The Queen of Flowers and Roots by “Io” (translated by Rosemary Dawn Allison); this is ( another romance novel retelling of Hades & Persephone, with some cool imagery and novel concepts )

What I Wrote/am Writing: ( Deeeep in the weeds on WNSO + Chocobox )

What Shows I Went to See: I went to see three shows in January: ( Brief thoughts on Phantom of the Opera, Mean Girls, and Lindiwe )

What I Watched/am Watching: The only things I’ve watched thus far in January is the final seasons of the Good Place and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (this one might have been late Dec – I am not sure at this point). TROS was rather …disappointing, to me, and I feel like all the reasons why have been Discoursed on the Internet to death, so I will just say I appreciated the hamming of Ian MacDiarmid and Actual Solid Acting from Adam Driver, the rest was a solid meh-to-below-meh, and I’ll move on.

The Good Place – I’m less sure about how I feel about it. I loved Season 1 and 2, but Season 3 felt like the walls were closing in on what was left for the show and this season appears to be mostly shooting us down the runway toward the end. There are parts of this season I’ve loved, but the last episodes seemed to mostly be an info dump, and ( TL;DR - I feel that the last few episodes re more infodumps than entertaining and I'm not happy about [[spoilers]] )

What I Played/am Playing: I played Bastion over the Christmas to New Year’s break, a short game that mostly asks ( How Do You Move On, After the World Ends? )

I started Judgment, the Yakuza spin-off, and am having a lot of fun with it, though I haven’t booked a lot of hours on it. So far, the main character, Yagami, fucked up and accidentally let a murderer go free to murder again as a defense attorney; he’s judged as basically an accomplice in Japanese society and making his money running shitty detective jobs instead, like documenting deadbeats who are stiffing their bills and, if necessary, giving them a beat down. Gameplay-wise it’s pretty much Yakuza, but with Ace Attorney’s interface painted on top. I like both of those things, so I like this game!

The Yakuza games tend to be the most m/m heavy ship-generators for me, and ( this spin-off is no exception )

What I Listened to/am Listening to: Pretty much ¡Spangled! Over and over. I’m in love with Gaby Moreno’s beautiful voice and the lyrics are so bittersweet and that is my trap, the bittersweet music. The first song, Across the Borderline, is both politically relevant and one of the most heartbreaking songs: ( When You reach the broken promised land... )